An example of this kind of a conventional game machine is disclosed in a Japanese Laid-open Patent No. 5-12139 published on Jan. 22, 1993. In a hot start system of the prior art, a backup portion is selected among storing areas for game 1 to game 3, provided in a static RAM of a game cartridge, in response to an operation by an operator. If no game data has been backed-up in a selected backup portion, a backup-objective data area of the scratch RAM provided in a video game machine is initialized so as to start a game at the beginning. On the other hand, if the game data has been backed-up in the selected backup portion, the game data is read into the scratch RAM of the video game machine so as to resume the game. As the game progresses, the game data in the scratch RAM is renewed, and for example, every time of making a hero act, the backup-objective data out of the game data of the scratch RAM is automatically stored in a predetermined (selected) storing area in the static RAM of the game cartridge, whereby the game status can be automatically backed-up at any time.
Furthermore, another example of the prior art is disclosed in a Japanese Patent Laid-open Patent Publication No. 10-31611, published on Feb. 3, 1998. In a file system for a nonvolatile memory storage medium disclosed in this prior art, a logical block number obtained by searching a minimum writing times information value among unassigned state information in a usage frequency list is made as a write-objective block allowing, available memory blocks to be written uniformly, that is, the frequencies of the writing to the blocks are made even so as to effectively lengthen the life of the nonvolatile memory.
However, in the former, a static RAM is utilized as a backup memory backing-up the game data, and therefore, it is necessary to utilize a battery for. Thus, there is a significant possibility that the battery will die during a game in which the battery is low, and in such a case, there is a problem that all the game data within the static RAM may be lost. Recently, in order to avoid such problems, nonvolatile memory (e.g., flash memory, ferroelectric memory, etc.), which does not need a battery for holding data, is being utilized as a backup memory. Thus, with utilizing the nonvolatile memory, there is no fear of battery exhaustion. However, flash memory, has a disadvantage of being slow in writing speed and short in life as compared with static RAM. Therefore, if a backup portion selected by the user is continually being rewritten, the life of the storing elements in that backup area/portion of memory becomes shorter than another backup area/portion, and therefore, another problem occurs in that the game data stored in that continually rewritten backup portion of memory is apt to be lost.
On the other hand, in the latter example, the number of rewriting times of each memory block of the nonvolatile memory is made the same so as to prevent a specific memory block from being extremely shorter in life than other memory blocks.
However, even in view of the above-described prior arts, there still exists problems that if a storing element (or a part of storing area) becomes abruptly defective (due to a short life) during the time the latest game data is being written in the backup portion, it becomes impossible to write the latest game data, and furthermore, in the instance that a part of the latest game data has been written onto older game data, the older game data may also be lost. Furthermore, in a case that the power to the game machine is turned-off midway during writing the latest game data, there occurs a problem that both the latest game data and the older game data are lost, or worse yet, all the game data is lost. It is noted that preventing/loss of game data obtained by progressing through a game for long hours is critical for the player.